


Lamplight Dancing

by aster_risk



Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, F/F, Fictober, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, no shame no regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 00:27:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12243561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aster_risk/pseuds/aster_risk
Summary: An upstanding medical doctor and a hard-boiled private eye. They worked well together, on the street and in the bedroom.





	Lamplight Dancing

Stella Gibson was made of fine wine and stale coffee. She was a class act or a ghost depending on the day, and she looked like an Old English socialite who had just killed the man in her life. Most people who met her would vouch that she had. It rang like a true story, regardless of whether it was. It lined up with the angles of her face and the curl of her lip as she slayed careless men who slipped their tongue with words that bit like the bourbon she kept in her desk.

 

Stella’s piercing blue eyes regarded Lieutenant Burns from beneath the shade of her hat. She blew a cloud of smoke into his face, a hand-carved pipe resting between her lips. “I don’t take walk-ins,” she said coldly. She carried a weathered British accent left over from her days in the Scotland Yard, but she spoke like Frank Sinatra sang—with a sultry swing that was for no one but herself. “You may be a police officer, but if you need my assistance you will call like the rest of my clients.”

 

Burns sighed, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper beard. “Stella, this is urgent. Working for the police is the right thing to do.”

 

“If my job was to be an upstanding citizen, I’d be paid a lot less,” she snapped, her eyebrows arched in careful condescension. “did you read the sign on my door?”

 

The sign read, in bolded letters,  _ Stella Gibson, Private Eye.  _ Her business didn’t usually lead her onto the moral high-ground. 

 

“Yes.”

 

“The subheading?” She took another drag from her pipe.

 

“By appointment only,” muttered Burns, then straightened his tie and smoothed back his hair. “Consider it a personal favor?”

 

Stella shot him a glare that could make a crime boss weep. “Get out.” It was a harsh whisper, the sound of a cat prepared to unsheathe its claws. Burns eyed the loaded Sig on her desk. “Out,” she said again.

 

“Stella,” he urged, “listen to me; your knowledge could make or break this case.”

 

She rose to her feet, a small woman who cast a looming shadow on the wall that seemed to swallow him up as she stalked around the desk. “I have a client about to arrive.” She stood in front of him, her arms crossed. He knew the dangerous glint in her eye; the last time he had seen it she’d broken his nose.

 

He dropped a folder onto her desk and gathered up his coat and hat. Stella’s stare followed him out the door.

 

As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Stella sighed and gathered up the stack of case files. Some of them were puzzling and worth a second glance; some of them were just wives cheating on their husbands and husbands cheating on their wives.

 

“I thought you said you had a client,” came a teasing voice from the doorway. “Or am I the supposed client?”

 

“Evening, Scully,” said Stella softly. She smoothed down the wrinkles in her blouse and ran a hand through her tousled blonde curls. Catching her eye, the woman stepped hesitantly into her office.

 

She was a striking, red-headed dame with a proud chin and a Roman nose, her features younger and less intense than Stella’s own. Still, she carried herself with confidence, dressed in a navy blue pantsuit and sensible heels—she was a professional. She wore a gold cross around her neck. 

 

Stella held out her hand, offering Scully a wan half-smile. “So sorry about the hassle,” she said smoothly, jerking her chin in the direction Lieutenant Burns had gone. She returned to her place behind the desk. 

 

“How was day one?” 

 

“Well, everyone I met assumed I was a secretary, and when I corrected them they felt no need to stop calling me ‘babe,’” Scully huffed.

 

Stella knew it was uncommon to meet a woman with a doctorate. Dana Scully deserved all the respect in the world. Stella had dropped out of University in 1924 when her father was murdered and decided to put her smarts to different use. She had been young, then, perhaps too young to know what she was getting herself into when she became a professional snoop.

 

She didn’t regret the decision.

 

Scully had pushed through medical school, worked her way through ranks of under qualified men, finally landed the well-deserved position of Chief Medical Examiner. Scully was quiet, though, the type of woman who rather than getting angry, found satisfaction in the knowledge that she was a thousand times smarter than they would ever be.

 

They worked well together.

 

“They’ll stop when they see you cut open a man’s brain.” Stella blew a smoke ring—the closest she’d ever gotten to a wedding ring, and how thankful she was for that—and watched it dissipate as it reached the window. She pulled a package of Marlboros from her desk. “Cigarette?” she offered and tossed a lighter onto the desk.

 

Scully reached for the package gratefully. “I’m not complaining, but—I don’t know why you still keep these. The pipe becomes you,” she said with a slight smile. “It’s very Sherlock Holmes.” Stella took it as a compliment.

 

“I keep them for you.” She slipped the package back into her desk drawer. “So, Doctor,” she said, resting her clasped hands on the desktop, “the day is over.”

 

“You going to look into Burns’s case?” Scully asked with a quirk of her brows.

 

She frowned at the folder in her arms. “Yes, but I won’t tell him unless I solve it.” Her expression softened as she met Scully’s eyes. “It’s good to see you. Are you staying the night?”

 

“I thought I might,” she answered with a wry smile. 

 

“Come on, then.” Stella fetched her key and gun from the desk, and tossing her coat over her shoulder, locked her office door for the night. She climbed the thin, creaking staircase to the second floor, Scully close behind. Scully worked long hours, and it was always a treat when she turned up at closing and spent the night. 

 

Stella dropped her bag by the door. Most days she’d sit down at her more private desk, have a shot of scotch and a shot of espresso and pour over case files until some ungodly hour of the morning. Tonight she had other plans.

 

She took her work home with her—it was too easy when she lived above the office. In fact, at first glance, her apartment  _ was _ a glorified office. The great mahogany desk took center stage, spread wide to maximize the space it consumed. Scratches in the hardwood floor like painted cobwebs marked every inch of the desk’s several relocations.

 

Stacks of loose papers littered her desk, files and manila folders and a navy blue fedora perched on top. An olive green blouse hung, wrinkled and half-buttoned over the back of her chair. On the desk’s sharp corner, a half-empty bowl of caramels balanced precariously, waiting for an earthquake to knock them to the floor. Wax wrappers circled the bowl like a charm to ward off evil. 

 

In her desk drawers she kept slips of paper in poor taste—filthy limericks and double entendres collected for personal amusement. A phone number on ripped photo paper, several hairpins, bullets, paper clips. A take-out menu lurked in the shadowy corner.

 

The desk glowed orange, a tungsten floor-lamp lit dimly behind it. The lamp was always lit, even when she was out. Dust gathered on the lampshade, broken only by a deliberate hand-print. Dust on the desk, too, beneath each folder, on the lime-green lamp with the burnt-out bulb and the backup pistol resting on her chair, polished to a shine. It was tiny pistol—it only held six bullets—and it had accumulated scratches and chips the way she had accumulated scars. 

 

She had at some point (she couldn’t recall exactly when), replaced two walls of her office with bookshelves, lined up Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett in perfect alphabetical order. But the top shelf—nearly bare, marked by an owl-shaped bookend, was Virginia Woolf, and the bottom shelf reserved for Tennyson. Her copies of Tennyson nearly split at the bindings, weathered and wrinkled like a sailor who spent too much time at sea but intends to spend more.

 

She had painted the other two walls with a streaky coat of brown, the color of over-milked coffee in the evening. The color of white chocolate mixed with Scotch. Soothing in theory, would taste like dirt. She knew; she had tried it once.

 

Only the doorway in the far corner hinted at her existence beyond the desk. An easy chair, a dark rug, a pair of riding boots on the floor and a trench coat thrown over the arm of the couch. Squeaky clean floor. The door frame was sharp, hard on the back, and gathered as much dust as everything else. 

 

An old wooden piano hid in the corner of the living room with a stool and a book of music. On a side table, in arm’s reach of the desk, a record player buzzed softly with warm, dark tunes. The rough-and-tumble guitars of city streets, optimistic blues, love songs trying their hardest not to be romantic.

 

“Welcome back,” she said to Scully, hanging up the doctor’s oversized trenchcoat.

Scully took a deep breath. She wrung her hands together. “Smells like home.” Familiar, un-grand, tidy but for the desk. It was indubitably Stella’s, although some of Scully’s clothes  hung in the closet. 

 

Stella brought out a bottle of red wine. It was brand new, unopened on the hunch Scully might stop by. “To the city’s new Chief Medical Examiner,” she said with a small smile. She fetched two glasses from her kitchen, untucking her blouse and slipping off her heels in the process. 

 

Scully gulped down the whole glass of wine as soon as she had toasted. 

 

Stella raised her eyebrow. “Rougher day than you let on,” she observed. Scully glared at her over the rim of her glass.

 

Stella chuckled and rested a reassuring hand on the small of her back, and Scully allowed herself to be guided to the small living room. It was a fireplace, a fine sofa, a makeshift coffee table, and the piano tucked into the corner. Stella didn’t usually let on that she played the piano, but she’d played a couple times for Scully. Old classics and the best of blues. 

 

Scully plopped onto the sofa and took a deep breath. “We had a body come in from the city limits,” she stated with finality. “When I questioned the local medical examiner’s conclusions about her cause of death, namely that her death was an accident—” she huffed loudly— “he said he doesn’t take opinions from women.”

 

Stella wrinkled her nose. “Fuck him.” She tolerated no arrogance in men, especially those who looked at woman like Scully instead of listening to her. She’d had her fair share of policemen who underestimated her abilities, but the bullshit Scully put up with every day was entirely different.

 

Scully’s nose wrinkled indignantly. “I wish I could say that,” she grumbled. “But most women I know—myself included—must speak delicately if we want respect. As a woman doctor, etiquette goes a long way toward furthering my career.”

 

That was something Stella had always known and resented about the medical world. Sure, her profession was dominated by washed-up ex-geniuses and hard drinkers who largely kept their distance from each other, but respect… she could demand it. Sometimes with a hard stomach and a hard fist.

 

“You always have my undying respect, if not the respect of your misogynistic colleagues,” Stella assured her. “And if you need your pipe-smoking, hard-boiled lover to intimidate them, I would be happy to assist.”

 

Scully chuckled and leaned back into the sofa, setting her empty wine glass on the table. “How about tonight we don’t talk about my snooty, misogynistic colleagues?” she suggested lazily. “How about tonight we ignore the world outside the window and enjoy the world in here?”

 

In the orange lamp light, Scully was a striking silhouette. She had a matter-of-fact elegance about her Stella found in no one else, something in between soft and weathered, like a little cat that owned a big alley. Dana Scully spoke her mind, wore trousers when she felt like it, and always fought back with her wit. She was carved of mountains and ancient sequoia, immortal and unflappable, only swaying when the wind was right. Not even lightning could strike her down. Scully was a beautiful genius, and they both knew it. What a shame no one else seemed to.

 

“Blinds are closed, wine is open,” Stella mused slyly. 

 

“Thank God.” 

 

Stella was surprised when Scully’s lips pressed firmly to hers—Scully knew what she wanted, but didn’t usually take the lead. She wasn’t about complain, though, not with Scully’s tongue pressed against her teeth, seeking entry, and Scully’s deft fingers playing with the buttons on her shirt. Not with such a rush to her head.

 

She snaked her arms around Scully’s waist and tugged her blouse loose from her trousers, her fingers dancing along the tattoo she couldn’t see but knew was there, like spiders in the park or Scully’s first name. 

 

“Dana,” she whispered huskily, because she was the only person who can. “Quicker.” Scully whimpered and nipped desperately at her neck. Teeth grazed her skin, tingling and stinging in the best possible way. She felt the bloom, knew she would see clients tomorrow with a violent purple stain on her throat, and didn’t give a shit. 

 

_ The new one-night man in her life,  _ they’d say, shaking their head disapprovingly as they walk out the door.

 

Scully’s hips grinded against her. She moaned.

 

It took seconds—felt like hours—but she felt the buttons on her shirt give way, and precise doctor’s hands push the bra straps off her shoulders and the skirt down her hips. Gently, she pushed Scully back into the sofa, the doctor’s unbuttoned trousers between her knees. 

 

“How about I turn your shitty day around?” she suggested, unfastening the hooks on Scully’s bra and sliding, with her shirt, onto the floor. The pile of discarded clothing only grew. 

 

“Absolutely,” Scully breathed, reaching up to run her fingers through Stella’s loose curls. It was these strange, heat-of-the-moment gestures of tenderness that defined Dana Scully. Days like this, she’d ask Stella to fuck her hard and fast, to push roughly into her and make her cry out, back against the cold headboard of their bed or the arm of a well-used sofa. But in the throes, minutes from orgasm, she would reach like a glass figurine and cup Stella’s cheeks, her freckled shoulders, or her wilded hair, touching her like she was a beating moth wing at constant risk of ripping.

 

Stella ran her hands along the length of Scully’s body, fluttering over her shoulders and teasing her nipples. She smirked as they peaked and admired Scully’s breasts—rosy and familiar, always a pleasure to see. 

 

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Scully,” she said, and she could feel the sensual rasp that overcame her voice. Only Scully did that—stole her words out of her lips and left her with half a voice. She was a witch, a siren, or perhaps something so inexplicably human it threw Stella for a loop.

 

“Mhm,” was all Scully said, her hands still winding through Stella’s hair.

 

Stella kissed her breast, then her stomach, trailing down her lines and curves, and dipping her tongue into her lover’s aching center. She could feel Scully’s abs clench, her muscles pulsing and her clit throbbing for attention. She felt the wine buzzing in her veins, her own wiry arms pressed against the sofa, her thumbs touching Scully’s waist. She flicked Scully’s clit, pushed her higher and felt Scully tremble around her. She explored until Scully went weak, then focused into her clit. 

 

She only lifted her head when Scully’s hips bucked around her, sitting between her knees and feeling the heartbeat beneath Scully’s breast. When Scully’s eyelids fluttered open, Stella licked the cum from her top lip and swallowed smugly.

 

“How do you feel now?”

 

“Like I want to do that to you,” Scully breathed. 

 

They were strange creatures, Stella mused as Scully descended from her climax and pushed her into the couch cushion. Always pushing and pulling, giving and receiving, taking the whole world upon their shoulders and then barring themselves away. Sometimes it was necessary—no one can live in the streetlights forever. She wouldn’t dig up lives and bury bodies, wouldn’t seek strangers in a dark alleys if she had no walls to come back to. She needed walls, if she and Scully were to survive; they had to remind the world that they only belonged to themselves. And, occasionally, to one another. 

**Author's Note:**

> Noir is one of my favorite settings to write in; it has such a wonderfully grim atmosphere. It's like writing in grey scale. 
> 
> As always, find my Tumblr at poeticsandaliens! This is the first of (hopefully) many Fictober works.


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